Piracy and reverse engineering (RE) of integrated circuits (ICs) counts as one of the greatest threats to the semiconductor industry since a design can be stolen in the process: a successful attacker can recreate an IC or manufacture and sell a similar (i.e. “cloned”) IC, can use said IC illegally or sell extracted and stolen intellectual property and thus disclose trade secrets to a competitor, for example. It is for these reasons that effective concepts and techniques for preventing IC piracy and reverse engineering are desirable.